The X Number of Things
by That Girl Six
Summary: Scott Tracy doesn't count sheep. He counts the things that scare him to death, along with all the other things people keep themselves awake with at night. Sheep would probably be better. They're fuzzy. He'll try that tomorrow night. Tonight, he's screwed.


**Disclaimers:** _Thunderbirds_ , in all their incarnations, are the brainchild of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and their people. Approach the altar of their brilliance with reverence, preferably with a bottle of tequila and a dollar bill. Also, any bastardized quotes/lyrics you find belong to the people they belong to who aren't me. This story is **rated T/M** for military-grade language (lots of F-bombs dropping, people), but that's about it, and **Gen** because I don't do anything else. There aren't any TAG **spoilers** , but this story does connect with the rest of my Tbirds stories, starting with _He Is, They Are_ , so expect film and series spoilerage (see end notes for specific episodes). If you haven't read my others, you might miss some inside jokes/stories. This story takes place about seven(ish) years after _He Is, They Are_ and one year after _Picnic_ , so age everybody up appropriately.

As always, thank you for your time. Even if you're shy like me and don't comment, your time alone is most welcomed and appreciated. Enjoy! — Six

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PS: This one is a little different for me. An experiment. It's still a full story in chronological order, just in sheep counting form. Wish me luck!

 **The X Number of Things**

 _by That Girl Six_

X) Thunderbird One.

He'd been told all his life what a gifted pilot he was, how he could fly anything with wings. Scott Tracy, they said, belonged to the skies.

You know, until he hit the ground in such a fantastically awful fashion.

When John got him put back together enough (sort of) after that thing that didn't happen, returning to duty didn't turn out too badly. They put him in helicopters instead of planes — not even remotely how it was done, but there it was again: he was a gifted pilot they didn't want to lose. The maneuverability and glide of being in a fighter wasn't there to trigger his hyperactive senses into thinking about that one indescribable hell he was never supposed to think about. (Not thinking about it, not thinking, it didn't happen, not thinking, nope.) His new ride couldn't make him feel the betrayal of the air he'd always ridden giving out on him, a bird with broken wings watching the ground approach without mercy. The circling of terrorist vultures on his location, dragging him from the cockpit nest when his leg couldn't hold his weight, let alone cooperate enough to run. And then the blood and bleach and all the too many things that came after that he —

Nope. Not gonna think about that.

The switch had been good for him, both skill-wise and from the PTSD side of things. It was enough to get him through. Thank the seemingly endless clown car of people who owed Dad favors over the years, right?

It helped how Scott truly could fly anything.

But 'One, she was different. She was the very definition of home now. She was an extension of his self, of his soul, almost to the point that he wondered just how accurate it was for them to joke about their metallic wives when she seemed to know what he wanted from her before he could flip a toggle. She was comfort, he was comfortable, and one of these days, he had no doubt she would make him freeze. One day, she would talk to him the way his Raptor had. He would hear her klaxons and feel the change in her vibrations and he'd know where he was. Or wasn't.

He'd love her for trying to keep him airborne as long as she could, but he'd be out there on the air again, broken-winged, and he wasn't so sure his luck would hold out a second time.

Please, Zeus, Apollo, Anybody Up There, don't let him freeze.

X) And then she did.

And he didn't freeze. He got a helluva knock on the head and ran into a completely different kind of terrorist cult whatever thing, but he didn't freeze, and it was in no way because he'd been surrounded by nothing but desert and two guys who got lost he'd forever be grateful for. But nope, he didn't freeze. Not the way he remembered it, anyway. Still, he didn't want to try for a third time around.

'One really was a good girl. Not that he ever compared 'birds or anything …

X) His brothers.

Talk about your things that'll make a man freeze. Each and every damn time. In birth order, reversed birth order, mixed up shell game, whatever ghosts they decided to visit upon him and his nights. He always tried to make it back to the privacy of his own room to do it because they needed him to be in the moment — it was in the job description, after all — but it was getting harder and harder. The calls were getting closer and closer. Inches and seconds as the world trusted them more and more to take on the things they wouldn't ask themselves to do. He missed the days when it was feet and minutes and they had to fight to get through the no-flys because no one knew to trust them with everything yet (and not just because he missed his sleep).

X) (Speaking of brothers and close calls … )Virgil and the bleach.

Little brother was on a slow burn for days, probably because of the mine collapse they weren't dispatched to deal with because they were already understaffed on the other side of the world. Half the Mid-Atlantic wasn't going to keep from washing out with Hurricane Ingrid by itself. They never made it to the mines, but Virgil's head was there anyway. Scott should've seen it coming. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

Dear deity, that nearly did him in two nights later when he heard Gordon and Alan shouting for help like that. Home and sheltered from having to keep the public face, they were free to be as scared as they wanted. To see them dragging Virg between them, his legs trailing well behind with his ankles bent whichever direction, it was sickening at best. They _all_ were just a bunch of scared kids then. Scott had forgotten what that looked like on them. It was ugly.

Scott rounded up all the bleach in the house like it was crack and flushed it, gagging at unintentionally summoned memories all along the way. He spent the vigil at Virg's bedside that night sipping ginger ale and burning a hole in the internet to find the best natural cleaning products he could get his hands on. Sure, it got Virgil started and then stuck on his natural products kick, but there were worse things to obsess about. Kyrano thought the house smelled nice, and Grandma appreciated not having to wear gloves to clean all day long. The next time Virg had a nutty — a high-rise retirement home fire where they didn't get nearly enough of the elderly out — Scott even helped scrub up 'Two's med bay on the second round, grateful they could both breathe through it.

X) Concussions.

He was on number four in the same general vicinity, and Doc Saul had issued warnings to Dad about all of the previous three. This time, though, she meant business. Either Dad found the best head gear money can buy, or he'd have to start taking applications because his oldest couldn't take too many more socks to his cast-iron skull without his eggs getting scrambled.

Ugh. Eggs. Gag.

The two of them did a lousy job keeping their voices down about it even from the entrance end of the sickroom. Non-concussion-friendly decibels weren't exactly unusual for anyone in the family, but once in a while, a mute button would be nice. At the very least, they could talk about him like he wasn't in the room in some other room.

Scott tried to reach the controls for the light level so he could control a small something, but even that was too much. Too far and too noisy, take your pick. As he panted out the exhaustion from the effort, he couldn't help wondering if this was what it felt like for athletes about to be told their careers were over — only instead of lost dollar signs flashing in the electric sprites behind his eyes, he saw the potential lost lives.

Hell, no.

"This is ridiculous!" Doc Saul's voice looked bright yellow behind Scott's pinched eyes. Too fucking bright. "The last time I checked, that's your child over there!"

"Keep your voice down," Dad said in a slightly bluish-purple voice. He'd had enough concussions of his own. He would know. Good Dad.

"Jeff, I know we've done this dance before, but this time you really need to hear me. His body isn't meant to do the job of an entire humanitarian organization on it's own. None of them are. You can't put this kind of stress on half a dozen people without consequences. I realize all of you are hellbent to do this as long as you can on your own, but it won't be much longer if he keeps this up."

"He took the hit _for Gordon_." Scott didn't know how many times Dad had said it, but it was often enough that he sounded damn ticked he had to again. There was a flatness to it, though, too, like he knew she was right. Of course she was. She had the medical degree. But there was that stupid logic thing again, and that didn't mean Dad would admit it. Not now, not when his kid was lying there with a busted noggin.

At least, Scott never did when it was one of the others laying there with nothing but the flying spaghetti colors for entertainment.

"In case you missed it, that's kind of the point. Gordon's a big boy with a surgeon's wet dream of his own medical issues. Scott needs to — "

"If you asked him right now how he felt about it, he'd say sparing Gordon yet another stay in a sick bed was well worth it."

"And whose fault is that?"

Scott didn't dare roll over to look at them — because _ow, shit, no_ — but if he could, he was willing to bet Dad had gone a little red around the ears on that one. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's their brother, not their bodyguard. How many more times am I going to patch him up because he put himself in the way instead of just pushing them out of it?"

"That's not what — Liz, you know I don't — "

"Bull. And what about the boys? I'm sure it was great for a big brother worship thing when they were kids. I was there when he covered for Virgil and Gordon plenty times when they scraped their knees when they were supposed to be doing their chores. But how do you think they feel watching him go down for them now? Gordon is still sitting out in the hall. Should we ask him?"

"Hey."

Okay, so it didn't matter how mad Dad was apparently, because Doc kept steaming on, and she didn't sound the least bit afraid to do it. "Maybe it was losing his mom. Maybe the Hood. Yeah, Penny told me about that one, too. I don't know everything that happened IR-wise before me, and I don't care. He has a problem, Jeff, and I think he needs to talk to somebody, or one of these days, he's going to take a hit his body can't come back from. I doubt their own safety will be of much consolation to Gordon or whichever one of them he jumps in there for when it happens either."

Dad's sigh was a little scary. Blue. Long and breezy and definitely belonging to a guilt Scott never did understand in his father. "I know. He's my kid, Liz, every inch of him. You think he doesn't scare the hell out of me? They all do. Not an incident like this goes by that I don't think my wife would kill me ten times over for what we do. Then I remember the times Alan told us what it was like to be out there with all the kids at school, to see what IR meant out there. It's too late. My boys are dug in, and they'll protect each other to the end. I can't ask Scott to back off any more than I could ask him to give up flying."

"Never doubted it, but that's not the point. The point is you can bet your ass we will have this argument again when one of the other boys is in that bed, too. And the next one, and the one after that. None of which had better be Scott for at least a year, you get me?"

"Does that mean you're staying?"

At that point, Scott let himself go back to sleep. He didn't need to hear it. Besides, his ears were ringing. The conversation quieted to a soft, floaty green. Good. Stupid concussions.

X) TI Department head meetings.

It was getting harder to sit in on them knowing, since he rarely said anything, that most of the people around the table made assumptions. He saw it in their eyes and the way they half-straightened when he came in the room but got ramrod straight when Dad marched in. The crowned prince was there to learn the ropes, not because he'd in any way earned the opportunity. Far too many people much more qualified than him were overlooked because of it.

Gordon really should've been the one to be there. He had a head for numbers and a way of getting people to loosen their (nooses) ties that Scott couldn't ever manage. They wouldn't hate Gordon the way they hated Scott.

Besides, part of him had to think it really was for show. IR was his job in a way TI never would be.

Mr. Ziegler, the head of the legal division, had a particularly ugly glare for him. He never did like that guy.

John could bring his scrawny spaceman ass down here for the stockholder meeting next month. Hells, yes.

X) John's hair.

It's down below his shoulders now, stick straight and always smoothed back in a ponytail. At first Scott thought it stemmed from the trip he'd taken last year to California with one of his old college girlfriends. John was the only one on her list of exes who didn't have long blonde hair, and John had been lonely for a while now.

Then Scott thought maybe it came out of a fight Johnny had with Alan during one of the kid's mini-revolts where he accused them all of forgetting the "para" part of them being a paramilitary organization and putting IR hierarchy over the family part again. John seemed particularly hurt by the argument, enough that Scott tore a few strips off Alan the next time they were both level-headed enough to attempt talking about it. John insisted it was nothing, though. To hear him tell it, he simply didn't get, first, planet-side and, second, off the island often enough to get a proper trim. He took care of it, and Dad didn't seem to hate it too much, so it was convenient. No, it wasn't meant to be a rebellion of his own. No, it wasn't a statement about his sexuality. No, it wasn't a prelude to many hippyish behaviors down the road, so there was no need to send extra soap or a honey bottle bear bong in the next supply run.

It was only after John came down home to give Alan some light duty recovery time when Scott hugged his brother and sat up all night talking with him that he realized why the damn hippy scared him so much.

It had been almost seven months.

John had stopped coming home.

Johnny needed a fucking haircut. Now.

X) The people they tried to save.

John's homecoming was anything but stellar. He was in the field so little even before the hair clue that he simply didn't have the same tactile people experience Alan did. He didn't have the self-defense training Alan did — _Tell me again the why_ , they each wondered later — so when the irate mother and widow came at him with her chef's knife, John didn't see it coming. After that, Alan didn't come home for a long time, and neither he nor John seemed the same.

That tornado job in Minnesota a month later had come with its own set of wackos, too. The father of the girl locked in the closet with her friends tried to sue both IR and Virgil individually, saying that she would've survived if Virgil hadn't left them to go to Gordon. It didn't matter that the girls were safer in the closet with all the sparks reacting to the spilled chemical fumes and disappearing floors while they waited for the equipment to get them out. It didn't matter that the coroner said she was dead before Virgil and Gordon ever found the girls. He was a grieving father. Those kinds of details didn't matter one bit.

John got slugged in the jaw on that one, too.

What kind of brother did it make Scott when he was secretly grateful Alan came home after that?

Apparently he wasn't too bad, though, because when he and John went up there to make the rotation switch, Alan hugged John with a laugh. "Big brother, I need to teach you how to duck."

X) Lost weekends.

He'd made so many arrangements, taken so many precautions, but man, the idea that the press could one day find out about that beautiful, sawdust on the floor, hole in a country wall terrified him. The staff and regulars at the bar were all in on it, but the Burnses couldn't keep strangers out without raising suspicion. Marcie loved having them and protected them like they were her own kids, but Scott heard it in her voice every time he called to let her know they were coming to town. One day, they were going to get caught. One day, the press would have it all wrong.

And yet, all those nights of drinking at the bar with Marcie or helping Adam clean up at last call or dancing with Callie made it worth it.

They maybe played it up between themselves from time to time — bullshitting brothers bullshit (but honestly) — but it was innocent enough and never mentioned outside of the five of them. Innocent and consensual beyond reproach. Most of the time, there wasn't anything more going on than what you'd see in a late night viewing of _Dirty Dancing_. When there did happen to be more, it wasn't with anyone none of them hadn't spent more than a few nights hanging out with. Very consensual dirty dancing with dinner and dancing and nothing untoward.

The papers would never see it that way, and not because it wasn't something that didn't happen in bars all across the world every night. It was because they weren't allowed to just have friends who weren't also in the papers for the same reasons. America's twenty-first century answer to the Kennedys wouldn't be friends with the mere working folk. Nope. There had to be something in it. Some angle. Just ask the Johnsons and Hiltons.

Scott didn't know Callie well enough to call her a _friend_ friend, not the way his brothers both biological and in the unit had taught him the definition of friendship, but he liked spending time with her. He liked to listen to her talk about her life, about her studies, her struggles with her overbearing mother, and her friend Taylor's outrageous pre-wedding festivities that she was expected to attend with bells on over the next year as maid of honor. She held him like a friend, intimate and interested, whenever they were on the dance floor. They talked movies and books and horses. One particularly drunk night led to talk of missed grandparents and how they would probably never respect anyone the way they had their grandfathers. Callie never once asked about money or anything else about Scott's life that would separate him from her the way the rest of the world liked to. For that all too short weekend, Callie gave Scott a chance to be normal. He was just a guy working a less-than-long shot with cute girl who made him laugh.

As their big brother, Scott treasured his ability to give the boys that same opportunity. He'd never put it that way before, but when Gordon mentioned it about Alan needing to dance with a girl besides Tin-tin some day, he knew that was what it was.

He wished for half a second he could give the boys that normal all the time.

Normal was something they'd given up on a long time ago.

As if they'd ever had the chance.

X) Chloe.

He never expected to run into her, certainly not at a TI shindig he had pretty much begged to get out of attending, but Grandma needed an escort. (Not _needed_ , because she never needed anyone to take her anywhere, but she missed Grandpa at these things with no one to dance with.) Chloe was gracious, though, when she introduced him to the nice enough guy she'd married.

Grandma rescued him when his ears got far too red at the husband's question of how they knew each other. Grandma never was a saint. She got it.

Neither of them knew she was the future president's daughter that night they hooked up in college. Man, if their parents ever found out ... It would make the explosion after Scott borrowed (capital B borrowed) the Mustang seem like a minor international incident compare to the all-out global war both fathers were capable of carrying out.

What's the statute of limitations on stupid behaviors (including but not limited to things he hasn't done with his fingers since) to impress a girl?

X) Alan's temper.

Something'd been going on with him for a long time now. It had ups and downs, enough that Scott wondered more than once if his brother should be evaluated for manic depression issues, but you didn't just have issues like that if you were Jeff Tracy's kid. Dad had come around a little in the last few years, bringing on a full-time psychologist for IR purposes, but something like that? Mom had had some horror stories about her own mother's highs and lows that he was glad the others weren't old enough to remember hearing.

No, something else was up with Al. They just had to find out what.

X) Alan's alligator.

Scott didn't care just how pygmy that thing was. Just knowing it was two doors down the hall was … Seriously, Tin-tin, what the ever-lovin' fuck? Sure, she couldn't have known, not when she wasn't there, but really? Who gives a guy an alligator for a birthday gift?

Alan was sweet with a lot of Mom in him, so he gave it the attention his girlfriend needed him to, but Scott could hear him talking to it sometimes. "You even think about biting my brother, toots, and you are modeling for a Birkin bag, you hear me? Good girl, Minnie."

X) Alan in general.

Between the racing — Scott'd had to kill a man because of what should've been an innocent day at the track, for fuck's sake — and so many other stunts, Scott was pretty sure half the gray on his head will come early because of that kid.

It used to be split fifty-fifty between Alan and Gordon, but Gordon had been so much more cautious since the rebar thing. They'd talked it out, apologized for keeping secrets from each other because he knew they'd both kept things about their military hells quiet, and they'd since made it work for them.

Alan now, he was different. It wasn't just the age gap, which led to memory and experience gaps neither of them could cross, no matter how much they wanted to. It wasn't the cars or weirdly responsible irresponsibility or even how he trusted Gordon as his go-to big brother before Scott. It was like Alan was just different in ways even Gordon didn't feel so far away from him.

But now, as things were stretching tighter and Alan and John were pulling farther away from Scott's sphere of big brother, it was scarier than Scott could remember feeling in a long, long time. It was keeping him up nights.

"Damn it, Alan, don't walk away from me," Dad yelled from somewhere down the hall.

Alan scared the hell out of them _all_ now.

X) The future.

The truth was none of them were getting any younger. Alan would be twenty-three here soon. They'd have only so many years left to figure out what happens next. He and Dad had taken meetings about it, talked about recruiting families like theirs to set up in different regions to spread the distance a little or train them up right on the island. They hadn't figured out the logistics yet, other than knowing family was what made IR work. No unit could function like IR. Family, though, gave everyone the same exact reason to be there. The solitary agents would always be there to work in the shadows, but the faces, the ones on the front lines, they needed a special kind of motivation.

So he watched. That family they couldn't save the mother of, the father of, brother, sister, whoever. How did they react? Scott watched to see if it turned them ugly like it usually did, but there have been one or two who have sworn to keep it from happening to other families. Like Dad did. Like they all did. He didn't know if they were IR's future or not, not yet, but they gave him hope.

X) Running.

Scott hated running, but nothing else seemed to work for him. Gordon and Alan did it so easily, but Scott just hated it. He should probably do it now before it got too hot for the day. It wasn't like he was sleeping these nights anyway.

X) Those words: "You're one of us."

Whenever things got bad, with accidents where one of them might be hurt or they were all feeling beat to hell, when Gordon was on the edge of losing his mind, he always reminded Scott to stop being himself. He wasn't Dad, he wasn't Mom, but he was sure as hell one of them, same level as them. Sometimes it was comforting to know the others would let him lay down the mantle of _more than just a brother_ once in a while, but the truth was he was given it the day Mom told him there would be someone for him to play with one day. But the thing Gordon (or Liz Saul, ahem, or anyone else) didn't get was that it wasn't responsibility that made him this way. It was the fact he didn't know who he'd be without them. Keeping them all safe was the only thing that kept him _Scott_.

X) Tin-tin and Alan (and all of them, actually).

Scott was too old, really, when Mom and Grandpa died. He wished sometimes he could take in the security blanket of fuzzy memories and not remember every detail of those days after. He instead saw with perfect clarity how it broke his father in a way a man shouldn't have to be broken until he's lived his entire life with the love he chose to spend it with. He still saw that loss in his father's eyes every day.

Tin-tin and Alan were a thing for real now, even with her taking some time off to the mainland to get her law degree.

It wasn't at all fair to Alan, but Scott wanted so badly to tell Tin-tin to stay there. Get away while she can. Because the big brother in Scott was terrified that one day he'll be the last one standing with all his protective efforts for naught. He was even more afraid of putting that same loss in Tin-tin's eyes, or Brains's, or anyone else's. But after looking at his father's eyes for so long now, Scott didn't think he could take seeing it in Alan's eyes. That would kill him.

Tin-tin needed to be safe in her books, away from crazy racecar drivers and alligators and overheated trips to the sun. She should be with someone who could give her a safe, normal life.

X) Brains.

Fuck it. Brains needed to get the hell away from them, too.

X) Grandma.

X) Kyrano.

X) Penny. Parker. That damn dog of hers (theirs).

X) All of them.

X) Sleep.

Really, he should sleep. Lying there, night after night, wasn't doing him a damn bit of good. He needed to stop thinking, do them all a favor, and sleep.

Well, he'd love to, but Virgil just knocked on his door. Apparently sinkholes in Argentina weren't on a nocturnal sleep schedule either.

 _(August 2015)_

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Episodes referenced, for those who haven't watched TOS, are _The Uninvited, Move and You're Dead, Attack of the Alligators_ , and _Sun Probe_.


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